Former minister in the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee cabinet Abdus Sattar joined the Congress on Friday at a time the party was bleeding from a slew of defections engineered by Trinamul.

Sattar, however, said: “My relationship with my former party (CPM) and its leadership was, is and will remain cordial. My move was not out of ill-feeling for my former party or its leadership.”

He joined the Congress in the presence of the party’s Bengal minder Gaurav Gogoi, state unit chief Somen Mitra and Rajya Sabha member Pradip Bhattacharya.

Sattar’s switch to the Congress is a rare exception when defections to Trinamul or, in some cases, the BJP, has become the order of the day in Bengal.

Sattar, 49, was known for his proximity to Bhattacharjee and had been the minister of state for minorities development and madarsa education between 2006 and 2011. He had been away from public life and active politics over the past few years and had focussed on teaching Bengali literature in a college.

“I wanted to be part of a secular political force with a pan-India presence that can take on the BJP nationally and Trinamul in Bengal. The divisive agenda of both the parties needs to be countered firmly. The Congress got in touch with me. I accepted,” said the former Amdanga MLA.

Mitra hinted that more leaders from other parties would join the Congress. He said such moves were early signs of the Congress achieving a turnaround in the state, where it had been relegated to the sidelines of electoral politics in recent years.

Asked if Sattar’s switch would pose hindrances to a prospective tie-up between the Congress and the CPM, Mitra said: “Sattar was not with the CPM for some time. We did not engineer his defection. We simply brought him back from a self-imposed political exile. That doesn’t change anything.”